On Whether to Convert from a Rhetorical to a Psychoanalytical Pedagogy

Abstract

Like psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic pedagogy is a particular way of paying attention, a way of paying attention that deflects attention away from other pedagogies' means and goals. Looking for what psychoanalysis deems the root cause of writing problems—intrapsychic conflict—foregrounds that kind of conflict, relegating to the background other kinds of conflict, such as the rhetorical. Even more than relegating, looking psychoanalytically can transform rhetorical conflict from that which initiates and helps develop discourse into that which impairs it. The case this article will make is not that it is impossible to reconcile rhetoric and psychoanalysis, only that because they can (as forms of writing instruction) contradict each other, such reconciliation is not easy.